Ohio, and the Langdell chapter at the University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois. These chapters start especially well. Both practically showed the three essentials insisted on by the BRIEF before a charter should be issued, namely, (1) a law school connected with a college, (2) a three-year course in the law school, (3) chapter rooms leased for one year. Ranney chapter had the stronger organization and their petition made the better showing. They have even kept up weekly meetings during the summer, meeting Saturdays at luncheon. The law school at the University of Illinois is young, but well organized. Rooms are maintained and Prof. James B. Scott, the dean, assures the Council that the chapter will be well watched over.

3. Largely through the efforts of Fritz v. Briesen, Field, '97, the Washington Alumnus Club was formed. Its membership is already about 75.

4. More of our members when in need of an out-of-town attorney are using the Professional Directory and catalogue to see if there is a Phi Delta Phi in the place where representation is wanted and sending him the case when there is. We know many instances where this has been done during the past year.

5. Pennsylvania's adoption of the Negotiable Instruments Law was aided materially by the BRIEF. That Law was before the judicial committee of the Pennsylvania legislature when the Harvard Law Review published Dean James Barr Ames's criticisms of the Law. The BRIEF, knowing Mr. Farrell's interest in the subject, prevailed on him to answer the criticism, which he did so ably that the view of the judicial committee was changed and they reported favorably, instead of unfavorably, and the Law was passed on their report. In the same line we may also mention the spasmodic attention given in New York city toward reforming the obnoxious jury-panel system there in vogue. This attention was due to the publishing of an address to the New York Phi Delta Phi Club last winter by Mr. Justice Gaynor, of the New York Supreme Court, with which address the readers of the BRIEF are probably familiar.

6. The legal side of the Order has been developed and more strongly emphasized. The alumni are sensing this and conse

quently are showing a greater interest and the profession at large is beginning to realize that Phi Delta Phi is a legal organization worthy of respect. All in all, the year 1900-1 is rather pleasant for the Fraternity enthusiast's contemplation.

The Alumnus Movement.

Those closely in touch with the organization feel a steadily growing movement toward extending the work of Phi Delta Phi into the alumnus field. The movement is heartening and shows that the legal and practical side of the Order is unfolding. It means that the lawyer as well as the law student is beginning to take an active interest in the work of the Fraternity. It means also that the alumnus clubs-clubs for the lawyers and run by lawyers-must be encouraged and recognized as parts of the general system.

Some years ago an attempt was made to start such a movement and several clubs were formed. The effort was made too early and he who chronicles the doings of those clubs furnishes unpleasant reading.

Somewhat more than a year ago the BRIEF (Vol. II., p. 250) went into the alumnus matter at some length. Tradition and the catalogue of 1898 gave the impression that the Fraternity had alumnus organizations. Tradition said that they were many and that they exerted a powerful influence on the young lawyer and the Bar at large. The catalogue (7th ed., pp. 478 et seq.) per contra told us that only five such bodies had existed, viz. The Chicago, the New York, the St. Louis, the San Francisco, and the Cincinnati chapters, founded respectively in 1888, 1890, 1892, 1896, and 1896.

The catalogue said further, at page 480, that the Secretary of the Council reported to the Fourth National Convention (held at the Northwestern University law school, Chicago, 1895) "that he had been unable to find out anything" about the St. Louis chapter. In other words, the St. Louis chapter, founded in 1892, was already dead.

In 1900 the BRIEF took up the work of investigating the condition of the alumnus chapters. A sixth chapter had been formed in Kansas City. Its president, Elmer N. Powell, Green,

reported that the chapter had held several well attended and enthusiastic meetings, but that interest of late had flagged. He hoped a charter would be given to the petitioners from the Kansas City law school, as he thought an undergraduate chapter in Kansas City would help the graduate chapters. The Brewer club, an organization of students at the Kansas City law school, petitioned early in 1900 that they be formed into the Brewer chapter, but the petition was not granted. We have been unable to get any proof of the activity of the alumnus chapter for 1901, the last reported meeting being that at the Midland hotel, Kansas City, April 20, 1900. The Cincinnati chapter was not found at all. Letters to T. L. Pogue, one of its founders, were returned undelivered, and those to other founders presumably enthusiastic at the time of foundingwere unanswered. John R. Schindel, the Hamilton alumnus editor, tried to discover the organization for us, but could not and reported that it also was dead.

Concerning the St. Louis chapter, the above-quoted report of the Secretary summarizes its condition. We also have been unable to find out anything of its life or of its death. Apparently, it died at birth.

The San Francisco chapter is alive but not very vigorous. Thos. Allen Perkins, its president, reports that the membership is about the same as at the time the club was organized (10) and that the aim is to hold annual meetings in connection with the joint meetings of Miller and Pomeroy chapters. Miller and Pomeroy held such a meeting this year. understand the club did not meet with them. Consequently, this club's page of doings for the year 1900-1 is blank.

We

The Chicago club, since its organizing, has regularly held large meetings about Christmas time. Booth and Fuller chapters have joined in several of the meetings. Last Christmas such a meeting was held and three hundred invitations were sent to the alumni of the city.

The New York club maintains regular monthly meetings from October to June. The Washington club, formed last fall, also holds regular monthly meetings.

Tradition is thus confronted with the fact that the Fraternity

at various times has had seven alumnus organizations and only seven. Of these seven those at Cincinnati and St. Louis are dead, those at Kansas City and San Francisco are alive and intend to hold annual meetings but do not always carry out their intentions, that at Chicago holds one large annual meeting at which some work is accomplished, while the principal alumnus work is done in New York and Washington where a definite programme is carried out during the winter. Besides this, though they are not regularly organized as alumnus clubs the alumni of Ranney and Chase chapters hold small weekly meetings in Cleveland and Portland, Oregon.

As said before, the early record of the alumnus movement is not pleasant reading. The record is but the natural fruit of conditions. The clubs were started when there were comparatively few alumni available for membership and when the Order was dominated by the each-chapter-for-itself idea, which idea developed alumni who cared nothing for the other alumni nor for the Fraternity in general and who were consequently not interested in graduate clubs.

Conditions are now changing and the later alumnus movement reflects the change. The idea of Phi Delta Phi as a national legal organization is growing and the alumni in settling are so centralizing that the clubs have plenty of available membership material. The centralization tendency is most pronounced. In New York and Brooklyn there are now 600 alumni; in Chicago, 450; in Washington, D. C., 150; in Cincinnati, 135; in Minneapolis and St. Paul, 165; in Boston, 220; in Kansas City, 57; in St. Louis, 145; 110 in San Francisco; 95 in Portland, Ore.; 55 in Philadelphia; 57 in Milwaukee; 75 in Columbus, Ohio; 40 in Detroit, and 122 in Buffalo-numbers entirely sufficient to support a club in each of these places.

The preamble to the constitution states that the purpose of Phi Delta Phi is to promote a higher standard of professional ethics and culture in the law schools and in the profession at large. In the past the emphasis was entirely on developing the chapters in the law schools. This was right for the Order was young and its sources needed the attention. The result of this emphasis is that we now have undergraduate chapters in the

thirty-two leading law schools. Most of these thirty-two chapters are firmly established and well organized. They initiate some three hundred and twenty men annually. The law-school part of the preamble is firmly rooted and attention should now be given to that part of the preamble which speaks of the work in the profession at large and which makes alumnus clubs a logical part of the Phi Delta Phi system.

Our members spend two and three years in the law schools and some twenty-five to thirty-five years in practice. Is it too much to say that the practical work of Phi Delta Phi as a legal organization lies as much in its alumni as it does with its undergraduate field?

The present alumnus movement shows great latent strength. The New York club is beginning a well planned year. The same is true of the Washington and the Chicago clubs. San Francisco, Kansas City, Cleveland, and Portland organizations, should show great development this season. In Chicago there is a well defined effort to hold monthly instead of annual meetings, and Cleveland and Portland should be regularly instead of irregularly organized. Besides this there is material for a club in each of the other seventeen above-mentioned cities. They will be there ultimately for alumni work is winning; some one to take the initiative in organizing is all that is needed to establish clubs in at least ten cities.